West End News: December 12

Birch Grove Community School in Tofte wants you to know that they have beautiful Wolf Ridge Calendars available just in time for the Christmas gift season. The calendars are available at the annual Birch Grove Holiday Book Sale that is open during the school day from now through Dec.17. Proceeds from the calendar sales go to support the biannual trip for Birch Grove students to the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland.

Speaking of Wolf Ridge, I notice that they are looking for a new finance director. The position is a full-time professional job with salary and benefits. They are looking for someone with an accounting degree and three years of experience running a similar sized organization, preferably a non-profit. Wolf Ridge has a roughly $3 million annual budget and employs 23 full-time and 13 part-time employees, as well as about 40 seasonal staff. If you are interested, just search the web for Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center and click on the “Jobs” link at the bottom of the home page. You can always call WTIP for complete contact information.

In the local jobs department, it seems like the permanent postmaster position at the Tofte Post Office will not be offered until next summer. We’ve had a series of friendly and competent temporary postmasters since Priscilla Revere retired a number of years ago. The U. S. Postal Service has been conducting a national review of their rural offices, which apparently held up the appointment at Tofte. As a result of the review, the hours have been reduced at Tofte to six and a half hours per day, but it also cleared the way to hire a permanent postmaster. The ways of the Post Office can seem a little mysterious sometimes, but the latest word is no job posting until summer.

The Cook County Visitor’s Bureau is offering customer service training Dec. 18 and 19. Linda Kratt, the new executive director of the Visitor’s Bureau, will teach the training.

Linda is a Cook County native with extensive customer service experience. Most recently, she was director of member retention for the Duluth Chamber of Commerce. She also owns a restaurant and bar in the Duluth area.

Maggie Barnard, who is the events manager at the Visitor’s Bureau, will show off the new VisitCookCounty.com website and run through a tour of the many upcoming winter events.

The training runs from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 18 at the Cook County Higher Education Campus in Grand Marais, and from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 19 in the Nelson Suite at Lutsen Resort in Lutsen. Make your reservations with Anna at the Visitor’s Bureau by calling 387-2788 or by emailing anna@visitcookcounty.com.

It was big news this week when the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed NorthMet Mine near Babbitt was released for public comment. The public has 90 days to submit comments on the document, which is over 2,000 pages long.

The NorthMet mine is a project of the PolyMet Mining Company and proposes to mine copper, nickel and other precious metals. This type of mining is new to Minnesota and is much riskier than the iron mining that we are used to. The risk of disastrous and long-term pollution is very high in this type of mining.

In my opinion, the new mining, as proposed by PolyMet, is a bad deal for Minnesotans. Even if you set aside the almost certain environmental destruction and the need to treat the mine’s wastewater for 500 year or more, this is still just a bad deal on its face value. These rich mineral deposits are owned by us - the people of Minnesota. The current mining proposals allow very wealthy foreign investors to get the lion’s share of profit from selling our minerals to China. I don’t think we should sell our treasure so cheaply.

It’s easy to be tempted by the offer of jobs, but we really have to ask ourselves if we are doing this in the smartest way possible. You can find the Draft EIS on the Minnesota DNR website. You can find PolyMet’s company website with the obvious web search. Arguments opposed to the mining can be found at MiningTruth.org.

I urge everyone to educate themselves on this important subject and submit your comments to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. This complicated issue has the potential to profoundly change our community and way of life - forever.

Everyone on the West End is very sad to receive the news that Carol Gervais has died. Carol was born in Hovland, but moved to Tofte when she married her high school sweetheart, Ron Gervais.

Carol was a fixture in the West End, raising three sons, working at several area businesses and watching more curling matches than anyone else in the world. She was an expert curler herself, with a mixed national championship to her credit.

Her friends and family will sorely miss her constant presence and dry sense of humor here in the West End.